Vimeo Founder's 'Brilliant Scam': Apply Here to Build Him a Bathhouse

New York media outlets who have been daydreaming of a chance to profile Zach Klein's turn as an upstate woodsman may have their chance yet! Klein, who cofounded Vimeo and was an early employee at CollegeHumor before it was sold to IAC, purchased a plot of land upstate a few years back, dubbing it "Beaver Brook." Now he's inviting all comers to help him build a bathhouse. For a small fee.

The start-up mini-mogul's Twitter bio once read, “Working on the Internet now so I can live in the woods later,” and to judge by his blog, he certainly seems more at peace among salvaged barn frames and artisanal outdoor hot tubs than he did in the five-bedroom loft in Tribeca loft he once shared with fameballers Ricky Van Veen and Jake Lodwick.

Klein's latest venture, DIY.org, is an app to conscript encourage children into the Maker Movement. Now, he's giving adults the same opportunity. Yesterday, he tumbled a link introducing the Beaver Brook School, an innovative educational initiative designed around disrupting Klein a new bathhouse:

Our school is an 8-day sprint to design and make a building together. Days are long, physically demanding, and filled with a mixture of technical workshops, construction, cooking, and lots of play in the woods. We are not an accredited program, but you can be sure you’ll know how to make a building once you’re done. This year we will build a bathhouse.

As with many of the startups attacking the education space, there is a hidden cost:

Participants must contribute $1500, which covers most tools, groceries, lodging and our instructors’ time. Participants are responsible for their own transportation to/from Beaver Brook.

Van Veen could hardly contain his jealously that he hadn't considered the same crowd-sourced option to clean his $2.75 million Chelsea condo. (What a Marnie!)

Related, I will be hosting an intensive house cleaning course next weekend. You’ll stay at my apartment, spend long days cleaning, and walk away with housekeeping know-how. You will also have cleaned an apartment.

Wannabe "makers," be warned. It sounds like the self-described "proselytizer of country living" has infused the application process with a touch of the evangelical. The final question on the application asks, "If civilization ended, what role would you play in the New Dawn?"